Tuesday, April 26, 2016

My problem with Facebook and Instagram

Have you read Dave Carroll's Facebook's Privacy Problem with Parents?
Apparently, I am one of the first people on Earth to carefully inspect the latest Facebook data policy because I found several broken links, blank page dead-ends, and the most astonishing form I have ever come across as a parent. I promptly tweeted it. It immediately went viral in collective disbelief and general outrage.
...
It’s both chilling and telling that the company forces a parent or guardian to hire a lawyer to draft a notorized statement to “establish guardianship rights” in order to opt their child out of ad settings on Facebook which include using their name to endorse unknown products and services to other users, should they experience any trouble finding, understanding, and using this screen in their child’s account settings.
I'm not going to paraphrase it here, because Prof. Carroll does a very able and thorough job explaining why this is so dangerous and alarming. Read it!

I left the Facebook platform because I was unhappy with the way they used private medical data gleaned, not from public posts, but from private messages between FB users*. Anyway, now I wonder if I should leave Instagram.

What do you think?

* It's difficult to find the news stories that criticize FB practices.  FB likely pays a lot of money to make sure those search results appear far, far down--or disappear altogether.

6 comments:

  1. Can't get your "read it" link to work, hmm

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Did the link at the top of the post also fail? It goes to the same article. https://medium.com/@profcarroll/facebook-s-privacy-problem-with-parents-ad3c43b994ca#.iukxnqlf4

      Delete
    2. Got it--thanks!

      Delete
  2. This is terrifying. And damn it, FB owns Instagram. Sh*t.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous16:44

      See page 3 of my Data Thinking before Data Crunching talk about Data Ethics.
      https://sea.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/Peng_SEA2016.notesview.pdf

      As a data professional, I am appalled by FB policies.

      Delete
  3. Wow. Really glad that Taco is not yet old enough for this! Although he already knows how to "swipe" on an I-pad.

    ReplyDelete

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